Answer extracted from the The Best of the Brutal Truth about B2B Sales & Selling podcast — listen to the full episode below.
What teaching principle separates top-performing sales professionals from average ones?
Top-performing sales professionals teach their customers to become experts on their own projects—not to remain dependent on the salesperson. If you can't teach it, you probably don't know it, and if you don't know it, your customer certainly doesn't know it. This transforms the sale from a transaction into a genuine partnership where customers feel empowered rather than defensive.
The root of this principle lies in a simple psychological truth. When customers lack understanding, they become defensive and resistant—the sale stalls before it even begins. But when a salesperson shifts into an educational mode and simplifies complex concepts, the entire dynamic changes.
Education in sales isn't about delivering a presentation or dumping information on a prospect. It's about strategic simplification—taking what is genuinely complicated and breaking it down into digestible pieces. As discussed in this episode, this skill separates professionals who close large deals from those who remain stuck in transactional selling.
The outcome of this approach is profound. When customers become more expert on the project than their own boss, that's when adoption actually happens. They're no longer buying a solution from a salesperson—they're championing a vision they now understand and believe in. They'll defend the deal internally because they own it intellectually.
"If you can't teach it, you don't know it. And if you don't know it, your customer certainly doesn't know it."
Herb Klan — Account Manager, Cisco Systems. Klan studied finance at Penn State and spent six years in finance and audit roles at GE Corporate before transitioning into sales at GE Healthcare in 2015, where he spent seven years running the imaging business in Charlotte, North Carolina. He now manages top-ten accounts at Cisco Systems across diverse industries including manufacturing, entertainment, automotive, fashion, and hedge funds.
This principle has real consequences for deal size and cycle time. When you empower a customer with knowledge, internal stakeholders become allies rather than obstacles. The CFO who understands capital expenditure implications becomes a champion. The IT director who grasps infrastructure benefits becomes an advocate. Listen to how Herb Klan applies this across his portfolio of enterprise IT infrastructure accounts at Cisco.
The inverse is equally true: if a customer leaves a conversation feeling stupid or confused, the sale is over. Defensive buyers don't move forward. They stall, they second-guess, they look for alternatives. Sales professionals who understand this—who view their job as genuine education rather than persuasion—close bigger deals and maintain longer relationships.
How to teach without overwhelming
The challenge many salespeople face is confusing education with information dump. You can't teach something in a single hour-long presentation and expect adoption. Instead, successful sales educators layer knowledge over multiple touchpoints, starting with the highest-priority concepts and building progressively.
This is where visual clarity becomes critical. Complex enterprise systems—whether imaging equipment at GE Healthcare or network infrastructure at Cisco—require visual translation. A one-page diagram that shows cause-and-effect or investment flow can do more for understanding than hours of verbal explanation. Klan's approach to simplifying enterprise IT concepts demonstrates why this skill becomes a competitive advantage in deals worth millions.
The best sales professionals also ask diagnostic questions before teaching. What does the customer already understand? Where are the knowledge gaps? What keeps decision-makers up at night? Only then can you tailor education to what actually matters to them—not what you think should matter.
Key takeaways
- If you cannot teach a concept clearly, you likely don't fully understand it yourself—and your customer will sense that confusion.
- Customers who feel stupid or confused become defensive and kill the deal; those who feel empowered become internal champions.
- The job of sales is simplification—breaking complex concepts into digestible pieces delivered across multiple touchpoints, not one overwhelming presentation.
- When customers become more expert on a project than their own leadership, adoption happens naturally because they own the vision intellectually.
See also
What organizational obstacles typically block priority and adoption of new IT infrastructure solutions?
Two main obstacles exist: prioritization of projects on the IT team's already mile-long to-do list, and breaking the status quo when moving from on-premises solutions to new infrastructure approaches.
How does the nature of enterprise IT infrastructure sales differ from transactional capital equipment sales?
At GE Healthcare, relationships were fleet-focused and ongoing—managing fleets of cath labs and CT scanners. At Cisco, the network infrastructure is a foundational, always-on system that requires continuous support and integration across the entire organization.
What is the primary skill advantage that helps close complex enterprise deals?
PowerPoint becomes a superpower in sales when used to take very complex concepts and boil them down into a one-page, easy-to-read, digestible format that decision-makers can understand and act on immediately.